Blacksmith hits nail on head with metalworking trade

At 13, Jim Jenkins was a country boy in Tickfaw who just wanted to ride his horse.

View full sizePhotos by Scott Threlkeld / The Times-PicayuneBlacksmith Jim Jenkins uses a coal-burning forge to heat steel and then hammers it into shape. He says he most enjoys working on architectural hardware and farming equipment. Even after several decades, Jenkins still loves the physicality of his work, which he says keeps him interested.

But Charlie "had to have shoes on him to ride him, and all the old blacksmiths were gone and nobody was doing it," recalled Jenkins, 73. "There was an elderly man, about 85 years old, and he said if I brought the horse down there he'd show me how to do it."

That man, Hoyt Smith, showed young Jenkins how to use a hand forge to fashion a horseshoe, and from then on, he was hooked.

"I was thrilled to death," he said.

Jenkins began learning the trade informally, letting his natural curiosity and eagerness to learn steer his education.

"My father drove a gas truck around to deliver gas and oil to filling stations and sawmills, and I would ride with him in the summer on Saturdays," he said. "All the sawmills had blacksmiths shops in those days, and as soon as we'd get there I'd get lost in the blacksmith shops until we had to leave and my dad had to come get me. Some of the old blacksmiths, they'd give me an old hammer or some kind of tool."

As Jenkins grew into his teen years, one of his friends started a rudimentary blacksmith shop, and Jenkins' collection of tools expanded from that of a hobbyist's to a budding professional's.

"I would go over there from time to time, and eventually I got to where I understood that if I had this tool, I could get this job, and if I got that tool, I could get this job," he said. "It became a kind of see-saw, chasing tools and learning new things. I'd read books. It just got to be a quest for it."

HANDI WORK

THE ARTIST: Jim Jenkins

HIS CRAFT: Blacksmithing

YEARS IN THE TRADE: 60

WHY HE DOES IT: 'Just the challenge of shaping the iron and getting it to do what I want it to do,' Jenkins says.

After graduating from high school and moving on to college, Jenkins' blacksmithing work slowed down. He married, Maxine, his wife of 54 years, and took a job at a chemical plant after finishing college.

Time passed. They raised their five children. The chemical plant gave Jenkins a steady job, but he grew bored.

"I didn't like being inside a plant eight hours a day," he said. "I felt like I turned off my life when I walked into that plant and turned it back on when I walked out. I didn't want my life to be like that."

Finally, at age 39, Jenkins got his chance to reclaim the passion of his youth. It was 1976, and the Jenkinses learned about the wagon train -- a caravan of period covered wagons -- traveling across the country in honor of the nation's bicentennial. He quit his job, and the couple joined the caravan, with Jenkins working on horseshoeing and wagon repair all the way up to Pennsylvania.

After returning home, he began taking blacksmithing jobs, as well as demonstrating his craft at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Through his Jazz Fest connections, Jenkins was offered a gig working at a blacksmithing shop at the 1984 World's Fair in New Orleans.

"I got introduced to several people around town that had building supplies that used blacksmith-made hinges and stuff like that," he said. "I did some jobs for them, and when the fair ended, I didn't have (another) job really to go to, so I just prayed and said, 'Lord, if you want me to do this ....'"

His gamble paid off. Jenkins increasingly became a source for the city's historic preservation and restoration builders.

"(Contractors) usually would send me a sample of the stuff, and I would replicate it -- strap hinges for shutters, big shutter latches," he said. "I made a lot of little fancy door latches with filigree and stuff like that. Anything almost that they brought to me, I replicated it where it looked exactly like it."

Even today, Jenkins still enjoys working on architectural hardware and farming equipment more than furniture or knives, which he's also tried. He still uses a coal-burning forge and lives in Tickfaw, where he was born. After all these years, he still loves the physicality of his work, which he says keeps him interested.

"Just the challenge of shaping the iron and getting it to do what I want it to do -- it's very tricky sometimes, and there's an awful lot to it," he said. "I just enjoy the challenge of it."